Camelia Florela Voinea: "Modeling and Simulation of Political Change Phenomena. Political Culture-Based Models of Society and Polity"

Modeling and Simulation of

Political Change Phenomena

Political Culture-Based

Models of Society and Polity

Camelia Florela Voinea

Department of Political Science, International Relations and Security Studies

Faculty of Political Science

University of Bucharest

Romania

ECPAM’2013

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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Agent-Based Modeling of

Social and Political Phenomena

Social Sciences:

• Social Modeling

• Social action models (Coleman,

1990)

Agent-Based Modeling and

Simulation Systems

Artificial Society

Reference models:

“Sugarscape” Model (Epstein and Axtell, 1996)

Political Science:

• Political Methodology

• International Relations

(Axelrod, 1995)

Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation

Systems

Artificial Polity

Reference models:

“RebeLand” Model (Cioffi-Revilla and Rouleau, 2009)

Camelia Florela Voinea, University of Bucharest

“Artificial Polity” - ECPAM’2013

Political Phenomena Modeling

Social Simulation

&

Computational

Sociology

Agent-Based Models:

• micro-level agents

• micro-to-macro phenomena

“emergence”

Computational Political

Science

&

International Relations

Agent-Based Models:

• macro-level agents

• macro-to-micro phenomena

“downward causation”



Aim of Approach

Modeling Paradigm: Political Culture

What?

macro-level agents

macro-to-micro phenomena (“downward causation”)

How?

Operational concept: “bottom-up” architectures revisited

Mechanisms: interaction and relational

Processes

Pathways



Modeling Paradigm

Political Culture: “thick-and-thin” neo-cultural synthesis (Mishler and Pollack, 2003)

Political Phenomena Modeling: multiple “thick-and-thin” continua

interaction continuum

interconnection continuum

(political) culture continuum



Modeling Political Phenomena



Multi-layer Architecture



Artificial Polity Simulation Model



Political Culture

Recurrent Phenomena

Cross-Recursive Processes

Trust {Attitude, Belief, Values, Norms}

Recurrence :

(1) based in individual

(2) interactions (“emergence)

and

(2) in political culture

(“downward causation”)



Experimental Models

Political Culture-Based Models:

briberyscape

privilegescape

baronscape

Model structure:

Agents: environment, social (interaction), culture

Simulation system: Artificial Polity



Polity Models

The Simulated Political Mechanisms in the Artificial

Polity Model

Simulation Scenario(s) Networks of Trust Inequality

Authoritarian Polity Model (CPM)

a.Generalized network of trust; included in polity; b.Coercive centralized control and the macro-level emergence of parallel autonomous networks of trust (patro-client networks)

a.Coercive control of the access to resources enables relations of exploitation b. Generalized categorial inequalities in public politics

Democratic Polity Model (DPM)

a.Insulation of existing categorical inequalities from public politics

b. Incorporation and

expansion of existing

trust networks into

the polity

a.Dissolution of coercive controls supporting current relations of exploitation b. Insulation of existing categorical inequalities

Two main polity

models:

1. Communist Polity

Model (CPM)

2. Democratic Polity

Model (DPM)

2a. Transition-to-

Democracy

Polity Model (Ts-DPM)

2b. Democratic

Consolidation

Polity Model (Cs-DPM)



Thank you !

